September 17, 2012

"New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd set the Jewish political community on fire [Sunday] with a column about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals that, according to her critics, peddled anti-Semitic imagery," reports Politico.

You know all the racist things Republicans are always saying, as seen by Democrats? It's like that.

"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews," Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic columnist and leading journalist on Israeli issues, wrote.

Snake-like... because the title of the article is "Neocons Slither Back." Dowd may not write the headline, and though she does use the word "slither" in her text, she's quoting Paul Wolfowitz, and he was saying that Obama shouldn't be allowed to "slither through" without having to take — Dowd's words here — "a clear position on liberals."

Dowd proceeds to say "Republicans are bananas on this one." Of course, if a Republican said Obama was bananas, that Republican would probably be accused of racism, because bananas remind us of monkeys, and the monkey is an animal that is associated with some racist iconography, and it's assumed that anything you say about the President is said while thinking about his race — which makes it conveniently/absurdly dangerous to criticize the President.

You can see why those who support Romney are tempted to scare his critics the same way. I'd recommend resisting this temptation. At some point, there really is anti-Semitism even where the text never says "Jewish." (I still think the Michael Moore movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" was trading in anti-Semitism.) Call it when you really see it, but be careful. You want to preserve your credibility — if not for its own sake — at least for the purpose of calling out your opponents when they cry racism (or some other unaccepted ism) and you think it's not there. The other option is to say "racism," "anti-Semism," etc. so often that no one cares about any analysis in that category anymore.

And by the way, if we're going to look at Dowd's imagery, we should look at all of it. She says "[Dan] Senor got out over his skis before Romney’s speech in Jerusalem..." I had to check Wikipedia to be sure that Senor is Jewish. He is. But skiing? Isn't the stereotype about Jews that they don't ski? I did my Google research on this. (Google is a wonderful way to check for the existence of a stereotype. Go ahead and try it to see what's been said about Jews and snakes or black people and monkeys.) Weeding out the articles about Jewish names ending in -ski, I found many references to the stereotype that Jews don't ski. The Ski Channel has an item titled "Yes, Jews Do Ski, Thank You":

I’m continuing my desire to rid the world of skiing stereotypes. Growing up, I always asked my parents why we didn’t take more ski trips. My mother always had a few excuses, but there’s one that stuck with me. “Well, honey, skiing isn’t a very Jewish sport.”.Hmm? I’m sorry? What is a Jewish sport? Bobbing for Matzoh balls?

And here's a Buddy Hackett routine on the Jews-don't-ski theme. ("I told her, 'Jews don't ski. Jews play pinochle and say, 'Helen, bring fruit.'") You know a stereotype is in place, when it's used as a basis for jokes like that.

Some things aren't funny at all, and some comedy is used to mask pain and anger, but let's calm down, be discerning, and keep some humor as we try to slither through the complicated problems strewn in our path by some obvious enemies who can't even think of laughing off that inept "Innocence of the Muslims" YouTube video.

Ann why are you surprised that Dowd would write such trash and that the NYT would publish it? How long will it be before you realize that the left is just as hateful and bigoted as they claim the right is? They simply reserve the right to themselves to decide which hatred and bigotry is acceptable and which isn't. Move along, there is nothing new here to see.

It's still early but our resident anti-Semite troll should be here soon as quickly as he hears his dog whistle along with the usual lefty amen choir.

The whole dog whistlr racism thing is too convoluted for me and if so, for the common man.

What is clear to us common folk however is that the Obama administration, far from improving race relations in the country as promised, has taken every opportunity to leverage race to implement its policies and secure votes.

I would recommend that no one ever follow your recommendations. I know I never will.

You voted for Obama in 2008.You have no sense of urgency for this election.You obviously are obtuse when it comes to Saul Alinsky's methods.I doubt if you have a shred of courage.

Just to start a list ...

1. You are a sourpuss.

That's all I've got.

cubanbob said...Ann why are you surprised that Dowd would write such trash and that the NYT would publish it? How long will it be before you realize that the left is just as hateful and bigoted as they claim the right is? They simply reserve the right to themselves to decide which hatred and bigotry is acceptable and which isn't. Move along, there is nothing new here to see.

While we're discussing racial stereotypes, etc.,isn't it perfectly obvious--intuitively obvious, really--that Obama's poll numbers remain as high as they are in the face of some of the worst economic times in our history simply--indeed almost solely--due to the "White Guilt" factor identified by Shelby Steel that elected him in the first place? And as hard as it is for most people to admit (to either themselves or others) that they had made a poor choice, or were just plain wrong in their judgment by voting for Obama, his race makes it even harder for all "right-thinking" "non-racist" white people to reject the first "Black President" in history least they be thought to be labelled as racist--or as bigots at the very least..

Of course, even assuming my thesis is true, there are two ways to look at the poll numbers, one good for Obama, the other not so much, but either way validating my thesis: either as (a) truly reflecting how the poll respondents will vote for the reasons given, or (b) reflecting a great reticence on the part of those polled to admit to pollsters that they are actually going to reject a black man even if they intend to do exactly that in the privacy of the voting booth.

Either way, the factor of "White Guilt" would seem to be massively at play here..

Stating the obvious, I know, but so few seem to be commenting on what, to me, is the Elephant in the living room. (PS: I WOULD have used the standard classic term "300 lb Gorilla" but we ALL know how raaacist that would be..)

I have a list of reasons as long as my arm why I despise the NYT - publishing military secrets; publishing over 40 consecutive front page stories about Abu Ghraib - most not advancing the story but were obviously intended to influence the 2004 elections; obvious anti-Catholic rhetoric; defending the story that led to Dan Rather's disgraceful career ending fall as "fake but accurate"; deliberately and falsely smearing the Tea Party; Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. I could go on.

But it's hard to take seriously that people named Sulzberger, Abramson, and Rosenthal are anti-semitic. Who knew?

Yes Farmer, I read the post but without your blinders. No other nation possessing nuclear weapons has ever stated that it intends to annihilate another nation simply because it's existence is an abomination. But somehow it's an evil neo-con ( read Zionist) plot using super Jew mind bending powers that only Dowd can see ( and you choose to ignore her 'vision') that enables The Zionist Neo-Cons to control the minds of Republicans.

Problem is that can't ( or won't ) see is the fundamentally there is no difference between Bush's nation building in the Middle East and Obama's bowing and scrapping and his Arab Springtime. Different tactics but conceptually the same, changing the sub-section of the Arab crazy and turning them in to what we would consider normal. It failed under Bush and it's an obvious failure under Obama's ministrations. You can't reason with crazy and you can't cure stupid. Dowd's problem is she can't deal with the fact that the Iranians really mean what they say and neither can you. And both of you are angry that the Israeli's are not willing to die just so the both of you shouldn't be inconvinienced by the damage that may occur from the Israeli's desire to live. The both of you remind me of Ghandi who told the Jews they should accept anihilation by the Nazi's to show their moral superiority.

I don't understand the morbid facination of bothering to comment on Dowd, I really don't. She had a nice run in the mid to late 90's. Like Clara Peller's "Where's the beef?" It was kinda funny the first time. On the 500th, not so much. Why not obsess what Chris "Tingles" Matthews has to say? This is one Alhouse Hillbilly who won't take the possum.

I think we're already reaching the point where accusations of bigotry -- whether anti-Black or anti-Jew -- are tossed around so liberally that my generation is tuning it out. Are people in their 20's really shocked in that Victorian-matronly way by racism or accusations of racism? You look at the internet, and it's full of casually racist jokes. There's even a Nazi emoticon (\o). Though I don't play videogames, I understand it's even more overt there, since people are actually shouting racist epithets at each other over their headsets.

This isn't like 20 or 30 years ago -- if you got outraged every time you saw something openly racist, you basically wouldn't be able function anywhere but the most carefully manicured walled gardens of the wired world.

Maureen Dowd isn't an anti-semite, it's just that she finds the Jews much more compelling and sympathetic lining up meekly for the cattle cars ("Schindler's List") than she does armed, dangerous and striking back at their enemies ("Munich").

many of these Dowd critics know she is not anti-semitic and that they are diluting the term for short term political gain.

You really don't want to start talking about that, do you? The Democratic Party has been devaluing terms of opprobrium like "anti-semite", "racist", and "sexist" for their own short-term political gain for many decades now. I used to take offense if someone called my opinions racist. Now I laugh and ignore them. Heaven help the Democrats if they lose their claim to white guilt through constant crying wolf, and we start voting as a bloc like the ethnic minorities do.

Would newspapers and media as a whole be improved if all opinion and speculation were filtered out and eliminated, and only facts were reported?

No, because the most effective way to create a narrative is just not to report inconvenient facts. News isn't an adversarial process -- not a true adversarial process anyhow -- so it's not like anyone is really checking up on you to make sure those facts get in the record properly. Sure they might filter in through blogs and alternative news, but it's easy to poison that well (wingnuts, moonbats, usw).

News would be improved if journalists just stopped pretending they don't have political affiliations. After all, they do have strong political sympathies. The current policy of facial neutrality (not making political donations, etc.) isn't designed to eliminate those political sympathies, just conceal them from readers. It deprives readers of crucial information in assessing the credibility of the news reporting. That's obviously great from the perspective of the reporters and media organizations since it helps artificially prop up their credibility, just like concealing bad news helps prop up the value of a stock, but it's not so helpful from the perspective of the news reading public.

Even without the slithering, "neocon" is a word heavy with antisemitic overtones. A neocon is not always explicitly a Jew, but is always playing the role -- scheming, running things from behind the curtains, nefariously promoting Israel's interests.

Look at what neocons are busy doing in Dowd's article:

Ryan was moving his mouth, but the voice was the neocon puppet master Dan Senor.

the hyperpower manifesto of the Project for the New American Century, which the neocons, abetted by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, used to prod an insecure and uninformed president into invading Iraq

After 9/11, the neocons captured one Republican president... they have captured another would-be Republican president and vice president

Before he played ventriloquist to Ryan, Senor did the same for Romney

Paul Wolfowitz ...slimily asserting

Cheney ... is lurking

Frankly, this article would be antisemitic even if she wasn't using a word that is widely understood as a pejorative synonym for "Jew." It's like Obama's pastor ranting about "white people" who control the banks, control the media -- and killed Christ. Which white people do you think he was talking about?

How long will it be before you realize that the left is just as hateful and bigoted as they claim the right is? They simply reserve the right to themselves to decide which hatred and bigotry is acceptable and which isn't. Move along, there is nothing new here to see.

Of course - that is because it is all that they have. Longest economic slump since the Great Depression (for very similar reasons - the implementation of anti-growth policies at exactly the wrong time), gas nearing $4 a gallon, rapidly rising food prices, $16 trillion in debt, $5 trillion new under Obama, and now a foreign policy disaster. All while their leader, the President plays more golf, hob nobs with billionaires and film stars, and watches as Rome burns.

Let me add that this anti-Semitic screed in not the least bit unexpected, after the dissing and shunning of the Israeli Prime Minister on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Israel is getting ready to go to war, a war that it rightfully worries that it will survive. And, the U.S. President doesn't have time to meet with him, with all his fund raising and golf games. The U.S. has traditionally been Israel's staunchest and biggest ally, and that rug is being yanked out from under them, at this critical time.

So, no wonder that a lot of Jews have been thinking second thoughts about backing Obama. And, what can the left do to compensate for this, and retain that important block of the Democratic Party coalition? The only thing let for them - the wolf whistle of Antisemitism. And, I have no doubt, that it will work to some extent.

Wow! Ol' dried up lib twat has a rant in NY, who'da thunk it? When peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are racist, everything is racist. And when everything is racist, nothing is. I'll be glad when the Muj blows up NYC. Country be better of without a bunch of liberal scolds telling me that I hate people with different color than me. No. I hate liberal scolds who think they know me and mine. I hate people who don't appreciate America for what it's done for every person on the face of the earth. I hate damned muj who think God is so weak they have to kill anyone who makes a joke about him. The muj even forbad whistling in Afganistan! Why?! What possible sane world could whistling be a problem in? And I hate enablers like Andy, and Shiloh who think this sort of behavior is okay, because it's not them that are getting killed. But you know who is gonna' be the first one's crying when it's their turn in the barrel.

Farmer not living in the alternate universe you apparently live in I didn't read that version of Dowd's piece. In the universe I live in where red isn't blue and two plus two isn't five it reads as it is, the way someone without blinders who is actually literate would read it. Reality can be depressing at times but it is real and ultimately can't be denied.

The liberals are willing to sympathize with Jews when they are victims but not so much when they are victors......I don't think Dowd's column was anti-semitic, but it certainly wasn't pro-Israel......In the Middle East, I think Official Victim Status should be withdrawn from both the Jews and the Arabs and conferred on the Coptics in Egypt, the Bahais in Iran, and the Christians in Palestine. They really do qualify as oppressed minorities, but it's not whether you're oppressed so much as who oppresses you.

"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews,"

The Jews power, by subversion, money, etc, is one of the favorite steriotypes of the lefties. Note much overblown image of tiny Israel as an evil superpower, when in truth it is greatly overpowered both militarily and politically by 22 Arab states. This image is created by the lefty media.

"This isn't like 20 or 30 years ago -- if you got outraged every time you saw something openly racist, you basically wouldn't be able function anywhere but the most carefully manicured walled gardens of the wired world."

Figure it.

Since you're only anti-Semitic or racist because of *who* you are and not because of what you say or do, and this is the liberal definition, all the young people yelling bad stuff at each other know that's not *them* so it doesn't matter.

It's not what you say, it's who you are. If you're one of *them* then it doesn't matter if you never say anything or do anything the least racist or anti-Semitic... it's there anyway, probably in CODE.

All the dog whistles, all the "code" all the BS and then you've got DWS saying that *of course* a conservative source lied about what she said when they quoted her as saying that Israeli so-and-so said to her that Republican policies were damaging to Israel, which the so-and-so in question denied ever saying. They had an audio file. Not only was the quote of her saying it correct in substance, it was exactly accurate word or word.

And you wonder... maybe she defines "liar" by *who* someone is too, and not if they lied or not. SHE doesn't lie, because of who she is and not because she doesn't lie.

Dowd isn't anti-Semitic and isn't sprinkling her column with anti-Jew stereotypes because of WHO she is, not because of what she wrote or didn't write.

Andy can be a bigot all day long and twice on Sunday but he'll never believe it because of WHO he is. And he can't be anti-Semitic either, by definition.

We don't EVER judge by the content of character any more, it seems, we judge by the color of someone's skin, or their heritage, or their political identity.

One of the reasons I feel an obligation to make criticisms of Israel is that, as a Jew, it will be hard for people to launch allegations of anti-semitism at me.I don't know the first thing about you in real life. For all I know you're someone else pretending to be a Jew.

I'm talking about the criticisms I make in real life, not in the Althouse comment section. As I've said before. I don't find the Althouse comment section a particularly productive place to engage in activism.

In real life, if I choose to say something critical of Israel, it's quite clear that I'm Jewish. People still sometimes call me anti-semitic, but it's clear to everyone they are directing that slur at a Jew.

Andy R admits: I'm talking about the criticisms I make in real life, not in the Althouse comment section. As I've said before. I don't find the Althouse comment section a particularly productive place to engage in activism.

[emphasis added]

That's an honest statement, especially the last sentence. I can't imagine you've convinced anyone of anything you hold dear. Your entire role here is to repel people from the values you espouse.* In that sense, you are subversive towards your own causes. I applaud that.

_____________*Any third party here who has been convinced of anything Andy R has ever written here over the years should chime in and support him.

Ryan was moving his mouth, but the voice was the neocon puppet master Dan Senor.

Dowd may not realize that she's paying homage to imagery that anti-Semites use all the time. For instance see this or this.

I think she is blaming the Jewish lobby (a.k.a. neocons) for taking us into the Middle East conflict. She doesn't blame Ryan (the Catholic) or Romney (the Mormon). She blames Senor (Jew) and Wolfowitz (Jew). And one's a puppet-master and the other is slime.

I once heard a Buddy Hackett routine where he discussed why he didn't ski.

Shortly before he died I encountered Buddy Hackett skiing at Aspen. I was very young but I did recognize his voice after someone else pointed him out. Not Aspen, Buttermilk. My friends wanted to go to Buttermilk and I was all Buttermilk sounds like a pussy place and I didn't want to go, and my friends said, yes, it is, but they were determined to go there anyway so that's how I ended up there. It was warm, and at lunch outside on the porch of one of those little places on site where you get a crap hamburger for $15.00 halfway up the slope.

This exchange was notable because it happened at double volume. That's what was so odd about it. Everything was quiet murmur murmur murmur then someone said loudly so that Hackett and everybody else out there on the patio would hear, "Hey Buddy Hackett wuzit going?" And we all cringed. The guy goes, "Howzabout com'in over for a hottub, ya wanna?" And we're all going, "??¿¿!! inside thinking wtf? What an odd and impossible way to strike up a conversation. And then Buddy Hackett responded matching his loudness in his comic voice which is apparently his actual voice, "I got my own hot tub, back at da house. Why wud I go ovah ta your house for a hot tub."

It was like saying, hey, I got a cheese sandwich, come to my house for a cheese sandwich.

The whole episode sounded a bit comical and rough, but it was violation of privacy, few of us would have noticed him otherwise, and his rebuff was cold, the whole thing was rude and fell flat.

I didn't know about his religion if he actually practiced one, but I know firsthand that he skied, downhill type, and it seems at the time had a place in Aspen.

cubanbob said...Farmer not living in the alternate universe you apparently live in I didn't read that version of Dowd's piece. In the universe I live in where red isn't blue and two plus two isn't five it reads as it is, the way someone without blinders who is actually literate would read it. Reality can be depressing at times but it is real and ultimately can't be denied.

You didn't read Althouse's post before commenting on it. You can't admit it, either. I'm not sure which is funnier, but both make you look like a horse's ass.